This French New Wave landmark is a jazz variation on classic American pulp. It plays the melody of an old crime story standard—criminal shoots cop, then hides out from the law—but to a strange new rhythm that doesn’t bother with suspense. Director Jean-Luc Godard dedicates this to Monogram Pictures, the old Hollywood bargain basement B-movie factory, and then proceeds to break every rule he can about how a tight genre film should work. In an old Monogram production, this story would be stretched taut over an hour-long running time and it would at least try to put you on the edge of your seat. Here though, Jean-Paul Belmondo ventilates a policeman and then pretty much takes a lazy smoke break afterward that lasts for most of the rest of the film. He lounges in a cheap hotel room with Jean Seberg and the two bicker lightly, flirt, ramble and talk about life, love and sex. The kinetic filmmaking, full of handheld camera work and jump cuts, keeps us engrossed along with its unique perspective. Breathless could be the first film ever made that’s explicitly geeky about other films. Belmondo’s petty crook models himself after Humphrey Bogart and the film itself works from the influence of old crime movies. Both achieve only ragged distortions of their forebears, which is compelling in itself and is how new waves get started.